Official Smogon University Simulator Statistics — July 2012

Official Data Miner

July has been one crazy month, simulator-wise. We had the usage-based tier update coincide with the release of BW2 and a BOAT-LOAD of new Dream World releases (note: the next usage-based tier update is currently scheduled for Oct. 1--if anything new is "broken" it is up to the various "councils" and "senates" to banish them to the "borderline" tiers). To top it all off, our simulator server was down for more than a week due to a DDoS attack.

We also began the transition from Pokemon Online to Pokemon Showdown. On that subject, I'd like to emphasize that although our primary focus will be on maintaining and developing Showdown, our plans are to continue to provide you guys with a PO server (now POv2). Both PO and PS servers are "official" servers, in the sense that they are Smogon-sanctioned and staffed, and battles held on either server will contribute to our usage statistics. So it's completely a matter of preference where you battle. PS requires no client and has a much larger (by a factor of 100 as of me writing this post) active playerbase. PO is a bit more stable and will lag less (due to the smaller playerbase). If you need help with either simulator, feel free to post in their forums (PO,PS).

Now onto the usage stats. I'm declaring these "preliminary" for now, because they don't include PO logs from after 7/19. There were very few Smogon PO battles after that date (due, partially, to there being no PO server from 7/19-7/29), but I'll still need to include what little there were into the "official" tally. (done--stats are now "official")

I also haven't yet updated my Lead counting script, so that post will be blank for a little while. (done, see post 3)

It should go without saying that there will be no 1337 stats (or new number equivalent) until PS sorts out the bugs with its ladder.

Finally, moveset and metagame analyses will need to be rewritten from scratch to work with the new PS logs. You won't see any this month, but hopefully you will next.

Note: if "real usage" (the number of times a pokemon ACTUALLY appeared in battle) looks wonky to you--like, really really low--that's because it is. Pokemon Showdown logs before, I think, 7/9 did not actually include a log of the battle. Thus, I had no way of determining whether a pokemon actually appeared in battle and thus was unable to count them towards "real usage." However, PS *did* log the number of turns in the battle, allowing me to continue to throw out "early forfeits" (battles lasting fewer than six turns).

Official Data Miner

This is a grossly unfair post, but I'm making it anyway. Here's the breakdown of number of rated battles in each tier held in the month of July on Smogon PO vs. PS. Keep in mind: there were ten days in July where the Smogon PS server was running, and the Smogon PO server was not. With there being NO Smogon simulators at all for one week beyond that, PS was up for almost twice as long in July.

On the other hand, until very recently, PS had a nasty habit of (1) not recording battle logs if the ladder server was down and (2) overwriting logs when the server restarted. So the number of battles will be underreported on BOTH sides, but PO probably got the worse deal.

With that in mind...
The month of July saw

24,328 Rated OU battles on PO vs. 142,936 battles on PS

For UU it was 2,644 for PO, 28,403 for PS

RU: 683 for PO, 9,093 for PS

NU: 1,714 for PO, 17,369 for PS

LC: 18 for PO, 3,674 for PS

Ubers: 631 for PO, 11,779 for PS

DW OU: 1,424 for PO, 410 for PS

A note here: PS didn't have Dream World tiers implemented until very late in the month, and at first they were done improperly

Finally, a comparison between PO Challenge Cup (which is not yet playable on PS, but will be soon in modified form) and PS Randbats:

PO saw only 274 rated Challenge Cup battles in July

meanwhile, PS saw 118,574 rated Randbats

Again, I repeat, this breakdown was not a fair comparison for a number of reasons. That being said, draw whatever conclusions you want.

Official Data Miner

Official Data Miner

Wow, virizion is seriously in uu range and so is tornadus-i. If this keeps up I really wonder what will happen to uu. Keldeo also looks interesting, it's extremely close to dropping, which is scary. Mew, aboma, and hippowdown as expected, will flutter from tier to tier. Also, amoongus hit ou, but did not go up any other tier, that's interesting. Can't wait for the next tier changes.

Thanks once again for the stats Antar. How are more people not using Terrakion more considering his scarf variant can easily revenge both non-Agility Thundurus-T as well as Tornadus-T. Looking grim for Tornadus-I though

Edit: Okay, fixed. It was actually an across-the-board problem having to do with how I was combining "Kyurem-B" with "Kyurem-Black" etc. The Therian formes will have gotten a bump as well, not to mention the Rotoms and anything where the name could have been recorded in different ways.

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How Keldeo fails to reach into the top twenty, I do not know. SpecsDeo's Hydro Pump, even when resisted under rainy conditions, usually winds up in a OHKO if not 2HKO.

I don't think the Therian forms or Keldeo have really had enough time to make a notable impact on the usage statistics. We knew Thundurus-t would be high considering the hype surrounding its release and that Tornadus-t's speed would predictably have it edging around the top ten perimeter. Come next month, stats will look more accurate overall on how the metagame has developed since the release of BW2.

Either way, Techniloom has certainly made its presense felt, with the Scizor-like buff recieved back in Platinum, Breloom has that little extra speed to outpace Adamant Dragonite and effectively nulify one Pokemon with Spore. And we're all aware by now that if you expect your Gliscor to have a chance against Breloom, you'll need to invest enough speed for the Jolly varients holding Life Orb; Bullet Seed makes quick work of Gliscor. Perhaps another indication that we should unban Excadrill, Garchomp and regular Thundurus alike.

Wow, virizion is seriously in uu range and so is tornadus-i. If this keeps up I really wonder what will happen to uu. Keldeo also looks interesting, it's extremely close to dropping, which is scary. Mew, aboma, and hippowdown as expected, will flutter from tier to tier. Also, amoongus hit ou, but did not go up any other tier, that's interesting. Can't wait for the next tier changes.

Virizion's been in UU range for awhile, so that's not surprising. I don't care too much about Mew, I always forget about its existence. Keldeo and Chansey are above 3.41 right now but we'll just have to wait for the next two months to see how they fare. Tornadus-I is not surprising; we all hog Tornadus-T over him for its advantages. Aboma and Hippowdon, I don't know, but they just happen to be the lesser used of the auto weather inducers. So yeah, Virizion and Tornadus-I are obviously going down a tier, as is Mew. The others are debatable. Amoonguss might follow in Dugtrio's footsteps just looking at it.

The thing is that if Hippowdon and Abomasnow actually drop down to UU, how viable would they be without Sand Stream/Snow Warning? I feel like Abomasnow has stats that would be in RU/NU, and Hippowdon I suppose could be a nice physical wall in UU. But then the main tier hop will be if Abomasnow would be in OU or RU/NU, which I feel is strange.

How Keldeo fails to reach into the top twenty, I do not know. SpecsDeo's Hydro Pump, even when resisted under rainy conditions, usually winds up in a OHKO if not 2HKO.

I don't think the Therian forms or Keldeo have really had enough time to make a notable impact on the usage statistics. We knew Thundurus-t would be high considering the hype surrounding its release and that Tornadus-t's speed would predictably have it edging around the top ten perimeter. Come next month, stats will look more accurate overall on how the metagame has developed since the release of BW2.

Either way, Techniloom has certainly made its presense felt, with the Scizor-like buff recieved back in Platinum, Breloom has that little extra speed to outpace Adamant Dragonite and effectively nulify one Pokemon with Spore. And we're all aware by now that if you expect your Gliscor to have a chance against Breloom, you'll need to invest enough speed for the Jolly varients holding Life Orb; Bullet Seed makes quick work of Gliscor. Perhaps another indication that we should unban Excadrill, Garchomp and regular Thundurus alike.

Click to expand...

I agree with your first two paragraphs. When I saw the stats of the Therians, I was like "omg these things are so gonna be top in OU, well maybe not Landorus-T." Then I saw that Keldeo was going to be released. I was like "Specs Hydro Pump in the rain? This is gonna wreck things!" But then it has a limited coverage and somehow walled by CM Latias(Theorymon. Haven't seen for myself).

As for the last paragraph, I think unbanning Thundurus-I would cause a stir. It's either more speed and Prankster(Thundurus-I) or more power but slower while having Volt Absorb to restore HP(Therian). Excadrill is sort of fine to unban since the popularity of Rain Teams will now threaten Sand Teams and Excadrill's unbanning would keep rain teams in check since nothing that's grounded would like to take that +2 STAB Earthquake coming from that base 130 Attack. As for Garchomp, I think it should stay in Ubers. It's just too broken for OU even after the release of the DW abilities and the Therians. Behind a sub, it could threaten a sweep so long as physical walls are out or are heavily damaged.

Edit: Okay, fixed. It was actually an across-the-board problem having to do with how I was combining "Kyurem-B" with "Kyurem-Black" etc. The Therian formes will have gotten a bump as well, not to mention the Rotoms and anything where the name could have been recorded in different ways.

Anyone else notice how Ditto really didn't make that big of an impact as everyone at first thought it would? It didn't even make stats to fit into the NU tier (that is, if there was a cutoff)! Are people not finding Ditto to be that big of a threat, or do people just find Ditto to be a gimmick as the "best" revenge killer?

RU Co-Leader

It looks like RU players are finally seeing that Crawdaunt and Absol are strong, neither of them have many hard counters in fact, your limited to tangrowth and poliwrath with daunt, and gurdurr and poliwrath for absol (fire blast 2 gud).

ditto makes mincemeat of most pure hyper offense teams, but it does little to nothing against stall or bulky offense. HO hasn't really been the top playstyle for a while and ditto is dead weight against too many teams for it to be popular. it has its uses, for sure, but those are very very limited when there aren't a lot of pure boosting sweepers around. the bulky ones (cm/bulk up) can beat ditto, so can any substitute users, and if you're gonna bring ditto in on non-boosting attackers, you could have just been using a more versatile scarfer that could do the same job, plus several others as well. ditto is far away from being the "best" revenge killer.

i think thundurus-T has the advantage over thundurus-I. they both outrun base 100s, which is the most important thing about their speed tier (admittedly incarnate also outruns stuff like gengar and terrakion), and volt absorb is way more useful than prankster twave (lol @ prankster nasty plot). that being said, it's not like they're completely incomparable. on the other hand i would say tornadus-T > tornadus-I by a pretty long margin.

and yeah most keldeo will get messed up by cm lati@s. hp ghost/ice doesn't hit hard enough and psyshock will send you to the grave even if you're a cm user yourself.

Kyogre took a huge drop. Finally it's below 40%. People are starting to realize that even though it can wreak havoc, plenty of things wall it such as the newly released Soul Dew Latias. Specs Water Spout is hard to pull off, with the increased popularity of SR and Spike-stacking. Groudon, barely decreased, thanks to Regenerator Ho-Oh and even White Kyurem who enjoys triple-stab in the sun.

Sand took a notable dive. Tyranitar is not even reaching 10%, despite walling White Kyurem without Focus Blast. Even Excadrill is higher because of its ability to spin.

Terrakion has dropped a long way from its former glory...dropping 12 spots in the usage stats.

OMG! Politoed dethroned Scizor! Unbelievable!

Keldeo is doing fine, looks like. No concerns. I knew it'd be around the top 30.

Gee..I never knew Scrafty and Mienshao would be in the Top 10 in UU...I thought they would never make an impact...and even go to RU.

Golurk is doing well in NU...and RU is getting a bit more Golurk.

It looks like Nidoqueen and Escavalier are fitting in RU real well. I knew they'd fit right in from the start. :D. RU is so fun to play with them in it. Nidoqueen and Escavalier are a blessing to RU. :D

Virizion in UU...I'm curious if it has anything to set it apart from Cobalion down there. Tornadus-I would be interesting..If Mienshao and Scrafty stay Tornadus-I would sent their usage dropping to RU...and maybe even NU.

Amoonguss sure looks like it'll be following Dugtrio's footsteps..moving to OU ALL THE WAY FROM NU!

Speaking of unbanning Exca, Chomp, and Thundurus-I. Thundurus-I is debatable, I'm not sure with the new Therians if it will be broken anymore. Unbanning Exca is fine with me; Politoed hurts it more than ever, Tyranitar and Excadrill will need serious support to fight Politoed off. As for Garchomp..It does have Sand Veil, yes, but Politoed can undo Sand Veil. And it does have a high 130 Attack, yes. But here's the thing..In this fast paced metagame..102 Speed is rather...irritating. It still gets outsped by a number of things: Tornadus (both forms), the formerly OU Mienshao, the Muskies, Starmie, Gengar, Dugtrio, Alakazam, JOLTEON, and more. So whether to unban Chomp or not is debatable. Unbanning Chomp and Exca might bring Bronzong rising up the usage charts.

I wonder why people keep saying that Multiscale Lugia is overhyped. Without the Mold Breaker-like abilities, there is not even one boosting sweeper that can get past it. The setup sweepers get paralyzed, toxic stalled or phazed after parahax. Lugia can fit in any team.